Jon Taffer Interview

Here's Why You Should Never, Ever Open A Bar

DG: You’ve called yourself a “nutjob” on many occasions, so do you think you have to be a little nuts to survive in the bar/restaurant business?

JT: In many restaurant/bars, they’re open at 11:30 in the morning and they’re open at 2:00 in the morning. Our businesses can be open 20 hours a day. It’s grueling and you have to love it. I tell people all the time that this is not a 9-to-5 job. If you don’t love this, don’t do it. If you’re lazy, you fail. If you’re not passionate, you achieve mediocrity.

DG: I feel like every guy I know at some point has said they want to open a bar. What advice would you give to the guy drinking a beer and dreaming of opening a bar?

JT: That’s a lot of the success of Bar Rescue: Almost every guy in America at some point in his life has at least said to himself, "I’d love to own a bar." If you’re into drugs I wouldn’t tell you to be a pharmacist, and when somebody is drinking a beer and saying they’d like to open a bar, the whole thing is wrong. You can’t love bars to open bars. You have to love the business to open bars, and that’s where people blow it. A lot of it isn’t fun. It’s not fun cleaning a bar, exterminating, doing inventory management, employee management. That stuff is hard, and it’ll overtake you if you don’t overtake it.

DG: Are there certain types of bars that are tougher to run than others?

JT: Nightclubs are tougher than bars, and restaurants are tougher than bars because they have much tougher margins. Food is more difficult to manage than liquor — it spoils, it gets overcooked, undercooked, damaged. But in the bar category, nightclubs are extremely difficult and the reason is that most nightclubs make all their money in about 16 hours a week, when you think about Thursday through Saturday night, about four hours each night. So if something goes wrong, you’re in trouble. They’re also extremely competitive as far as DJs, energy — it’s very difficult and you see a few people who are very good at it like Tao, and Lavo’s Jason Strauss or Jesse Wynn. Most nightclubs come and go. I believe Tao is now nine years old, and that’s unheard of.

DG: Is there a bar or restaurant trend that you wish would go away?

JT: Yes. You know, during the recession the industry started discounting because the only way businesses were going to make market share was by reducing prices. Companies like Applebee’s and T.G.I. Friday’s put in these programs, and the problem is that discounting is addictive. People get used to it. Now when the recession ends and things start to get a little better, people are in the habit of spending less. We have a lot of bodies in our buildings these days that we’re not making money from. That’s a trend in the industry we have to change, but you can’t do it overnight; it’s hard. Our industry is driven by two things: the bodies in our buildings and how much each of them spends. Those are the two things we can control as marketers.